Restaurants to Eliminate Tipping? Do you Agree?

As a server, a story like this leaves me torn. I would consider myself a pretty decent server! I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a restaurant because my family owned one. Do you agree that restaurants should do away with tipping all together?

Not long ago I was discussing with a friend about a restaurant in the Twin Cities that plans to eliminate tipping. At first I was like, "Oh, hell no!" But after thinking about it, I saw SOME pros to the idea:

1. Servers wouldn't have to fight over the best shifts, because money could be made any time of the day!
2. You wouldn't have to leave super upset when a group of people clearly don't know how tipping works.

Cons to eliminating tips:

1. On a good day, I can make WAY more in tips than any boss would be willing to pay me. (Let's be real!)
2. I LOVE having cash!

So, the whole point behind this theory is to raise food prices and wages obviously, and ask patrons NOT to tip. The man behind this (Danny Meyer) says,

The American system of tipping is awkward for all parties involved: restaurant patrons are expected to have the expertise to motivate and properly remunerate service professionals; servers are expected to please up to 1,000 different employers (for most of us, one boss is enough!); and restaurateurs surrender their use of compensation as an appropriate tool to reward merit and promote excellence … Imagine, if to prompt better service from your shoe salesman, you had to tip on the cost of your shoes, factoring in your perception of his shoe knowledge and the number of trips he took to the stockroom in search of your size. As a customer, isn’t it less complicated that the service he performs is included in the price of your shoes?

You can read the whole story here.